October 19, 2012 Gabriel Perna
blog
In the past, I’ve written about how many CIOs from major hospital and healthcare systems are expressing doubts about how cloud computing can be used to provide better care while saving money. While a level of pessimism is definitely there, people like Robert Kaufmann, M.D., from the Kaufmann Clinic, are making me realize the path to that $5.4 billion may be paved with smaller providers, more willing to take a leap into the cloud.
July 3, 2012
news
According to new research from MarketsandMarkets, the global healthcare cloud computing market will be worth $5.4 billion by 2017. The report which studied the cloud computing market over the five year period from 2012 to 2017, found that in healthcare it will grow at an annual compounded rate of 20.5 percent in that time period.
May 3, 2012
news
Researchers at The Mount Sinai Medical Center in conjunction with four other academic medical institutions are touting the use of cloud technology for medical image sharing. According to the researchers, patients are saying the cloud offers a faster, more efficient way to store and distribute their medical images than current options.
May 2, 2012 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
blog
At an eHealth Initiative Patient-Centered Town Hall on Chronic Disease Management last week, I was inspired by the story of one patient, Julie Cabinaw, user experience director at Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Services, who conquered obesity and Type 2 diabetes. Not only was it impressive how Cabinaw lost 80 pounds and got her A1C levels back to normal, it was remarkable to hear about the IT interoperability challenges she overcame to do all this.
April 24, 2012 John DeGaspari
article
At a time when healthcare reform is making sweeping changes in the way providers and patients are viewing healthcare, some physicians have become open to business models that promise to make healthcare more efficient while improving care. One example of this is applying the franchise concept to orthopedic care, in a network of clinics that will be able to share and use information in ways that will drive down costs.
April 19, 2012 John DeGaspari
article
More hospitals are looking to the cloud as a viable way to store clinical, imaging, and financial data. Experts acknowledge its advantages, but caution it’s a step that requires careful planning and vetting of potential cloud vendors.
April 17, 2012 John DeGaspari
article
As hospitals face challenges of moving to the electronic medical record, often while operating under tight budgetary constraints and with small IT staffs, moving data to a cloud platform is becoming an attractive option to some. Making the right decision depends on carefully weighing risks and benefits, according to weighing risk Michael Gaasche, manager with the business development department of Smart Devine & Company, LLC, a Philadelphia-based consultancy and, prior to that, IT director with the Department of Health and Opportunity for the city of Philadelphia.
April 5, 2012 John DeGaspari
blog
With the digitization of medical records, there has been a lot of interest lately in storing information on the cloud. But storing data on the cloud—particularly clinical data—also presents risks to the hospital, which is legally responsible for the data it stores on the cloud is safe. That’s a tall order, and there are plenty of potential pitfalls to avoid when negotiating a contract with a cloud vendor. “The cloud is great, but the trick is that the customer doesn’t have control of the data, and yet they are still responsible for it,” says Diana J.P. McKenzie, partner and chair, Information Technology and Outsourcing Group, Hunter, Maclean, Exley & Dunn, P.C., Savannah, Ga.
April 4, 2012
blog
I don’t understand why application vendors place little importance on reporting requirements. I get the fact that customers like to customize their reports, but why not make that an inherent feature? Maybe that is why the market is constantly creating so many 3rd party Business Intelligence (BI) vendors. But what about Clinical Intelligence (CI) requirements?
March 29, 2012 John DeGaspari
blog
Cloud computing is becoming a valuable tool for hospitals, and there are good reasons for that, as more organizations digitize their clinical systems. I recently had a conversation with Richard Temple, executive consultant at Beacon Partners, Inc., Weymouth, Mass.
Typically, a lot of the computerization by hospitals has centered on financial systems, and hospitals typically wanted to keep that information close, housing it in their own data centers, he says. But things were more manageable, in terms of what needed to be available. After all, if a billing system went down at night, lives didn’t hang in the balance. But with the advent of the computerization of clinical systems, hospitals are faced with requirements of uptime and redundancy. “Hospitals aren’t necessarily geared up to support a computing infrastructure of that magnitude, so they look to the cloud,” Temple says.
March 22, 2012 John DeGaspari
article
Fairview Health Services, a 10-hospital, 42-clinic health system based in Minneapolis, has implemented a cloud-based communications platform that, among other things, allows its physicians to conduct virtual video “visits” with their patients, and schedule follow-up video visits.
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